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An Author Explores The Historical Allure Of Spices

August 15, 2004|By Reviewed By By Roger K. Miller, Special to the Sentinel

In Padua, Italy, in 1214, a medieval food fight neatly illustrates one of the contentions in Jack Turner's Spice: The History of a Temptation. Noble ladies and gentlemen, crouching behind "battlements" constructed of expensive furs and cloths, pelt one another merrily with equally expensive commodities -- nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves -- and other spices and foodstuffs, for little reason other than that they can afford to do so.

Conspicuous consumption was not the only value of spices. Spice became the odor of sanctity, both before and after death. The second-century Christian martyr, Polycarp, was said to have given off a smell of fragrant spices on his funeral pyre -- like a "human incense stick," as Turner puts it.

Anecdotes such as these can be found throughout Spice, and it's a good thing, because they spice up the readability of Turner's work. The author presumably did not set out to rope smoke, but he might as well have because he chose a tough topic to get a handle on. It is not so much a history of the spice trade "as a look at the reasons why it existed."

Turner explores why spices are appealing and how that appeal emerged, evolved and faded. Spices came to the West bearing a cargo of associations, myth and fantasy, and "how spices came to acquire this freight . . . is the purpose of this book."

His approach is not narrative, but, as he says, more like polyphony, "albeit without the satisfying resolution." This thematic organization tends to wander, as he admits, the way "spices themselves always have done." His self-deprecation aside, the approach lends itself to an occasional wobbling of focus and contributes to repetition.

Still, basing his writing on research that is broad and deep, Turner succeeds remarkably well at capturing the evanescent attractions of -- primarily -- pepper, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon. He begins with an overview of the trade -- the great explorers of the Age of Discovery such as Columbus and Da Gama were spice-seekers first, he maintains, and geographic discoverers second -- and then moves on to sections dealing with uses of spice in food enhancement, religion and magic, medicine, and as aphrodisiacs.

There is some overlap in all of this as he weaves back and forth between the ancient and medieval worlds because, as he writes, food and cooking were considered less an art and more a medical science. Spices and medicines were one and the same; the High Middle Ages were the golden age of the spice trade and spice medicine.

Though spices (from the Spice Islands in what is now Indonesia) had been available in Europe centuries before Columbus, it was widely believed they were grown in a terrestrial paradise. Fantastic accounts of these fantastic "places" were more readily accepted than factual ones, like Marco Polo's, of actual places.

Along the way Turner spikes a few myths, for example, that the reason medieval folk used spices so heavily was to conceal the taste and smell of rancid meat. As Turner explains, if you had enough money to buy costly spices, you could afford to buy at least half-decent meat.

Rather, what spices did, in the form of sauces, was cover the taste of salt, in which meat, when it could not be obtained fresh, was preserved. The "rancid" argument could apply more to wine and ale. In a time when the water generally was unfit for human consumption, they were drinks of choice. But they tended to go bad quickly, and hence were commonly spiced to improve their taste.

The section that may arouse the most interest in the reader is on aphrodisiacs. "That spices were sexy was an unchallenged nostrum of the medieval scientist," Turner writes, in recounting some peculiar, not to say off-color, things. There are entertaining tales of the clergy (including the mythical Pope Joan) supposedly having their virtue tested or undone by indulging in spicy foods.